“It has become a Europe-wide habit to refer to Muslims in particular and migrants in general as though they are barbarians who must either be civilised or banished, before they pollute the egalitarian societies in which they were either born or now live. Lacking all sense of humility, self-awareness and historical literacy, Europe’s political class acts as though these communities not only manifest homophobia, sexism, antisemitism, political violence and social unrest, but also as though they invented them and introduced them to an otherwise utopian continent….
“Herein lies the problem with Enlightenment values, as they have been promoted in recent years. The values are fine. But those who champion them most fervently also do so most selectively. They embrace Muslim women campaigning against sexism, but ignore those fighting racism, Islamophobia or war. They attack Muslim fundamentalist homophobes on housing estates, but align themselves with Christian fundamentalist homophobes in the White House. They demand secularism and assimilation, but view every action by Muslims and immigrants as essentially foreign or religious.”
Gary Younge in the Guardian, 10 December 2007
A hospital in northern England is playing down media reports saying that nurses have been ordered to stop normal duties five times a day to turn Muslim patients’ beds so that they face Mecca.
“‘A kind of aggression’. ‘successor to the Berlin Wall’. ‘lever in the long power struggle between democratic values and fundamentalism’. ‘An insult to education’. ‘A terrorist operation’. These descriptions – by former French President Jacques Chirac; economist Jacques Attali; and philosophers Bernard-Henri Lévy, Alain Finkielkraut and André Glucksmann – do not refer to the next great menace to human civilization but rather to the Muslim woman’s headscarf, which covers the hair and neck, or, as it is known in France, the foulard islamique.”
Self-styled “comedian” Pat Condell, 
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